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New Haibun Editor
Introduction
It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you Simply Haiku's new
Haibun Editor, W.F. Owen. Owen is an American original with a
distinct voice. Like Steinbeck, Kerouac, Whitman, and Snyder, his prose
and poetry are down to earth, almost song-like, original, and
accessible. Owen has that rare ability to make the haibun he writes
come alive as if he's talking directly to you. He connects, drawing
you into the world he lives in. And what a world!
Robert Wilson
Owner/Managing Editor
Simply Haiku
Featured Poet: w.f. owen
 w.f. owen was born in 1947 in Austin, Texas. He resides in Antelope, California, just outside Sacramento and currently is a Professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Sacramento. His main teaching interests include interpersonal communication and the role of artistic communication in personal development.
He was educated at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, specializing in speech and English education, and at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, where he received a PhD in Speech Communication in 1982.
Bill has published haiku, senryu and haibun in such journals as Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Acorn, bottle rockets, Mayfly and Contemporary Haibun. He won the Harold Henderson Haiku Contest in 2004 and the Gerald Brady Senryu Contest in 2002 and 2003. In 2001, he appeared as a featured poet in A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku and has appeared in the Red Moon Anthology of English Language Haiku each of the last five years. He was a featured reader at the 2003 Haiku Poets of Northern California's Two Autumns Reading and edited the Two Autumns chapbook, If I Met Bashô, in 2005. As President of the Central Valley Haiku Club, he co-edited the club's three chapbooks: blink, feel of the handrail and Tangled in Dreams. His book, small events: haibun by w.f. owen, will be published in 2006.
HAIBUN
Quake
1906 I am burning children running crying pushed together like cordwood around Lotta's Fountain the smoke of cook stoves dots the middle of my streets shouts plume up like flames licking the sky:--"Meet at the Fountain! The St. Francis is still up!"--people huddled and overdressed waiting for that one face to come around a corner--stay away from my buildings!--liquefied ground eats a building here bricks shedding there like a snake sloughing skin in the old country--the snake lives!--time after time I witness reunions at the Fountain--that man carrying his Chinese mother her feet bound dangling across his arms she drives him like a car . . .
2006 I guide you out of me turn left, go up now down the steep hill of Gough Street searching for the Bay Bridge--snap out of your daydream!--the light is green the tires burn rubber the car stares briefly straight up into the marine layer then down with a thud yes that sign says SBC Park-- remember Candlestick the Battle of the Bay the Bay Series Loma Prieta?-- ah, I was shaken then too they called it a Quake compared to the Great Earthquake it was a mere shiver.
aftershock
the picture on the wall
straightens
Ring
Walking guard duty around a Quonset hut of ammunition on the Marine Corps Air Station, Oahu, my high school ring tapping the barrel of a loaded M-14 rifle. Possible racial and anti-war riots threaten the base. Tropical stars trigger memories . . . the Major in boot camp warned me that this ring would snag and pull my finger off when jumping from a helicopter in Vietnam. Instead of going to West Pac, I got stuck driving a "six-by" truck in California until boredom spurred a transfer request, which could have led to the Tet Offensive, not here to paradise . . . first week on the "Rock": this sunburn from bodysurfing, tasting poi (the glue-like brown paste made from taro), hearing stories on the base from Marines and on liberty in Waikiki from soldiers and sailors on R & R, about rumors of Russian tanks crossing the DMZ, moments of unspeakable terror beside hours of boredom. Alcohol-induced loose tongues, like the kid in the bar so juiced he removes the prosthetic mask covering what was left of his face from falling on a grenade. He sticks the plastic facade on someone's arm and watches them flick it off like some dead alien in a sci-fi film . . .
A faint steel guitar playing Hawaiian music wafts through swaying palms just ahead of the approaching change of guard. "Halt, who goes there?"
About a year later, while SCUBA diving off the base, near an old firing range, I lost my senior ring.
combing
the military beach
a crab with one claw
Summer Dreams: American Haibun & Haiga Vol. 3, 2002
Womb
We drop as if by parachutes below the mirror-smooth surface of Shark's Cove on Oahu's north shore for a rare pleasure dive away from SCUBA students. Our bubbles the only obstructions in crystal blue water, like a snow globe turned over gently just once. We move among schools of small fish, which part and reassemble around clouds of exhalations much as birds allow kites to fly around them. Through lava tubes with ceiling exits that mark our trek with tiny streams of air, we meander toward caves that go back under the one road, which encircles this most remote end of the island. A seduction of darkness beyond our handheld lights sucks us inside the cave with each gentle wave swell, like the sweetness of Matsumoto's shave ice stand just up the street and above our heads. Most get ice cream or black bean paste at the bottom of their cones as a reward for digging through the colored ice. Perhaps this cave will yield such a treasure. Between breaths my mouth waters thinking of our after-dive treat. The slush of paste, cane syrup and vanilla ice cream gives way to the silt in the cave now so stirred that I must hold the depth gauge against my facemask with the flashlight directed obliquely. Fifteen feet of lava above us. And yet, no sign of the exit. We wait. An incredible impulse to shoot upward to life so close . . .
We breathe shallowly, resting on the bottom like two nurse sharks inhaling through gills. Occasionally, as the murk clears, we shine lights onto our own faces, calming each other . . . Now, faint blue, the jagged rock opening. We move through, out and up . . . reborn.
Fifteen years later, wearing a mask, knowing it could have ended that day.
first breath
after the caesura
my son's birth
Mariposa 8, 2003
Flying a Kite
First, they put a strip across the road to count traffic. Then, they put up a stop sign. Now, they have erected a signal light. They call us a city. My friend calls it progress. He shows me how to find our location on his global positioning satellite system. I listen politely, but don't get it.
in the parking lot
flying a kite
with my son
Frogpond XXVII: 1, 2004
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